Last Friday I went to configure my father’s new PC, a Dell Inspiron 531 mini-tower. This is Dell’s lowest-priced offering and it’s as basic as basic can get. A box with Windows XP, mouse, keyboard, power cable and not much else.

This box comes provided with a 1.6GHz single core AMD Athlon 2560e 512K, your option of Vista or XP (the chosen OS was XP), 16x DVD Burner, 1GB 800MHz DD2 RAM, 160GB 7200rpm HDD, nVidia GeForce 6150 SE Integrated video, and 1-year warranty with in-home service.

If you order this box with absolutely no options that add additional cost, the price is $249, however bear in mind there are taxes shipping charges.

Being that most people will understand how this box would work as far as speed and performance are concerned, I’m going to concentrate on setup questions instead.

How much bundled crap is in the OS?

Surprisingly little. There was a Windows Live toolbar installed in the IE browser which was annoying but easy enough to get rid of.

There were a bunch of Windows Live Essentials stuff as well, also easy to uninstall.

Trial-ware was only limited to a McAfee 30-day subscription, which I uninstalled for the freely available AVG instead.

Other than that there were a few Dell-specific support programs, and those were uninstalled as well.

Usually it’s the case where you spend hours uninstalling all this crap. But in this instance it took about 20 minutes which included a few reboots.

Does it comes with A Windows CD?

No. Dell, like many other PC manufacturers, do not provide an OS disc with lower-end models. Unfortunately this is par for the course no matter who you buy from. I wish it wasn’t.

How long does it take to upgrade?

The first thing to do with any new PC with Windows after you’ve uninstalled the crap is to run Windows Update. This is a long, tedious process, but fortunately since the OS had SP3 on it already it saved some time.

Additionally, with XP you do have to run Windows Update at least four times on a brand new OS install. The first time installs the WGA stuff, the second time is for all the critical updates, the third time is for the newest software (IE 8, Windows Media Player 11), the fourth time for critical updates to those software titles. The longest was the second.

Total time patching/upgrading was about 3 hours. It would have been faster save for the fact my father has a very basic broadband internet plan that slowed things down a bit.

How loud is it?

You can barely hear this thing running. In fact I had to specifically look at the HDD light to know if the drive was being accessed or not. It is whisper quiet.

How is the keyboard?

Very good. Dell does provide some of the best standard keyboards with their PCs.

How is the mouse?

Terrible. It’s basic, all black (and I mean all black – there’s not any other color on the entire mouse), feels odd in the hand and the software mouse options allow for almost no wheel-click control whatsoever. I had to use my father’s old Logitech optical mouse which does have those options with the MouseWare software. This wasn’t a big deal since he was used to it already.

Tip: If you have a Logitech mouse and want all the options available for it, just download the control software from here. If a Microsoft mouse, you want the IntelliPoint software (which also works perfect on Windows Vista and 7 by the way.)

How much does it weigh?

Not much. This box looks a lot heavier than it actually is.

How loud is the optical drive?

Surprisingly the DVD burner drive is very quiet. You can hear it but thankfully it doesn’t make an annoying racket when in operation.

One complaint: When the tray is open, the button to close it is blocked. You can push the drive tray closed, but nevertheless this is a design flaw.

How are the ports set up?

Four USB ports in the front mounted mid-height on the tower. Very, very convenient. This works out very nicely whether you have the box on a desk or on the floor. There are four USB ports in the back also. In front, the USB ports are horizontal 2×2. In rear, vertical 2×2.

The audio ports in rear are very plainly marked and color coded as is the video port (which is VGA by the way) and the network port.

This is a stark contrast to the way Dell boxes used to be. The user-friendly nature shows throughout. No, it’s obviously not a Mac, but this is light years better than the way yesteryear Dell boxes were.

How is the case construction?

Solid. It doesn’t feel cheap even though it is a cheap box. Even the power button feels solid.

Is it worth the cash?

I’d have to say yes. This is the lowest-priced offering and what you get is fair for the price.

This box is upgradeable, however most who would buy it probably wouldn’t do more than add in more RAM, possibly another hard drive and not much else.

There’s also a 3½ and a 5¼ bay free. You could stick one of those 13-in-1 card readers in the 3½ and whatever else you’d want in the 5¼.

Bonus: The 5¼ bay has a flap-style door in front of it, so no matter what drive you install, the box will retain it’s look. For example, if you want to add in another DVD burner, you can completely disregard the color as when it’s closed the drive is hidden by the flap. In other words, if the white drive is cheaper than the black one, go for it because it will be hidden when not in use.

What would happen if you added in some options?

The only upgrade worth getting on purchase is the AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core CPU. All other options would be cheaper to buy and install yourself.

If you tack on the best CPU available for this particular model (the X2 5600), it adds $90 to the price. However there are two others besides that which are lower, that being the X2 5000 ($60) and the X2 4450E ($30). The X2 5000 with Windows XP or (or Windows 7 later) is more than fast enough with that and 2 or 4GB RAM for daily computing purposes.

Final notes

For those wondering if this is a slim model, no it isn’t. That would be the 531s, with ’s’ for slim. I’m happy to report that the 531 is a regular mini-tower, as in the kind that’s easy to work on if you want to add things into it.

With XP this is a very good day-to-day machine. With Windows 7 it would work well also.

Just remember that this box is not meant to be a tower of power. If that’s what you’re looking for, see other models besides this one. But if you want to stay basic and cheap, it’s tough to beat the Inspiron 531.

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago.

In this installment we’ll be looking at something everyone has in their computer, a Central Processing Unit, better known by its abbreviation as the CPU.

In the last article written about this on PCMech (which was a really long time ago), microprocessors were discussed up to the 386, so we’ll start from the 486 to present.

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Barebones PCs are computers that takes a good chunk of the build process out. The box comes delivered completely assembled but you must put in your own supported processor, RAM, hard drive and possibly video card (some have built-in video on-board.)

If you’re looking for a box that has absolutely no “influence” from Microsoft, Apple or large OEMs like Dell, HP or Gateway, building yourself or going barebones is the way to go.

Three manufacturers that provide good barebones PCs are MSI, ASUS and Shuttle.

Here’s a few offerings for you to check out (and remember, the prices don’t include processors, RAM, hard drive, etc. – you have to add those in.)

• MSI MBOX K9N6SGM-V
  Price: $104
• ASUS P1-AH2 
  Price: $174.99
• Shuttle SN68SG2
  Price: $159.99

All three of these Barebones PCs are for AMD processors and not Intel. Yes you can go Intel if you wish, but if you go AMD you will usually save a few bucks.

Make sure to read the reviews for each so you can get a good idea of whether Barebones is right for you.

AMD has started production of a 1GHz Athlon
processor this week, with a 1.4Ghz version being made in the middle of
Y2K. How has AMD suddenly
jumped from being 100-50MHz slower than the fastest Intel processors,
to being faster than Intel? Maybe
it’s the new .18u technology. Maybe
it’s the design of the processor, or maybe its luck. It doesn’t really matter to me, but what does matter, is the
fact that the Athlon processors, being faster than the Pentium iii,
can overclock as well, or even better, as the Pentium iii. I remember a day when the newest AMD processor could hardly
keep up with the speed it was rated at, let alone trying to overclock
it.

There has been news of the Athlon 500 making it to 650MHz. And what I like about the processor is that the multiplier lock
is on the PCB, which can be manipulated. And, if you haven’t seen the PCB of an Athlon Processor, It
has a slot type of connector on the top, right next to where you
manipulate the PCB to change the clock multiplier. What could this be used for? Certainly not something like SMP, being that’s built into the
motherboard. Personally,
I believe it’s for attaching it to a module that will let you
manipulate the clock multiplier without the need for soldering tools.

All I can say about the heavy competition of the two CPU
makers is: only the consumers can benefit. Prices have nowhere to go but down. When Intel released the Pentium iii 600Mhz/100MHzFSB CPU, it
was the first flagship processor from Intel to start at a price under
$700.

What is in a name? A
Merced by any other name would perform just as sweet.
Intel, once again, changes the name of a processor to
something that rhymes with Titanium. This time, they changed the name of the processor code named
Merced to Itanium. Why the change in
name. Well, if it rhymes
with titanium, it must be a strong performer, since titanium is a
strong metal, right? Well,
that’s not necessarily true, but that’s what Intel would like you
to think. The Itanium
processor will boasts advancements in computing technology just as the
Pentium did in its time. But,
personally, I wouldn’t count AMD out. They have a processor, code named the Sledgehammer. (Think
about why they would name it that.) It boasts 8^th Generation architecture just as the
Itanium does, but there is a twist. While you need a truly 64 bit operating system, which M$ will
be producing, for the Itanium, you can run any PC operating system you
want on the Sledgehammer, from MS DOS 6.2 all the way up to Windows
2000. Please think about
all the advantages of that so I don’t have to waste a few pages
explaining them to you.
Speaking of speed…
Although I would really like to bash a certain movie in
this portion, I promised myself I would not. If you haven’t noticed, the prices of SDRAM have risen very

speed fully in the past few months. Some say it’s because manufacturers were making next
generation DRAM such a RAMBUS, DDR SDRAM, and VC-SDRAM. That, in turn, would bring the amount of SDRAM modules on the
market down, which would drive prices up. Other’s say that the manufacturers would just sick of getting
hardly any profit, so simply raised the prices of their chips. But, the majority of people blame Mother Nature. I believe it was a combination of all three. In all reality, do you seriously think the price of ram was
going to stay at around 90 cents per MB?

Here is a story most people wouldn’t want to touch with a thirty
meter pole. AMD has been
stealing (not legally, just morally) Intel’s CPU design ever since
the 286 days. I even have
an AMD 286 on my key-chain. Back
in the day, it didn’t matter which company made your big bad
286-12MHz CPU, because both had the same design. Then, Intel goes and changed the name of it’s fifth
generation CPU, which it called the Pentium. Because of that, AMD could no longer copy Intel’s design,
because it was copyrighted. Please
keep in mind that companies cannot copyright numbers, which Intel used
to name processors prior to the Pentium.

So, that is where
the story really begins. Back
in 1994, AMD had to find it’s own processor core. At first, all they really did was take the 486, shrink it down
from .6u to .35u; speed it up, from 80Mhz to 133Mhz; and added twice
the L1 Cache than a 486. They called it the 5×86. It didn’t last for very long, being the Pentium clocked at
75MHz did better than the 5×86 clocked at 160Mhz in some cases. So, AMD bought NexGen, a RISC processor maker. A RISC processor is the type of Processor ALPHA makes, it can
do only a few things, but very quickly, unlike the Pentium, which is a
CISC, which can do a lot of things slowly. AMD
then came out with the K5, which was a Pentium alternative. All it basically was was a 5×86 with some Pentium like
features. That, and it could fit into Socket 7, which is the same CPU
socket Pentiums fit in. After
the horrible failure of the K5, they came out with the K6, which was
suppose to revolutionize the industry…but didn’t. Then it was the K6-2, which had a set of special 3D
instructions. It did a
little better, especially in the low-cost computer market. Intel didn’t like AMD making money one bit, so it released
the Celeron, which was a cache-less Pentium II. That didn’t do very well, so they added 128KB of L2 cache at
full CPU core speed. This
was proven to be just as good, if not better, than the Pentium II at
some activities. To top it off, The Celeron ran at a much lower cost than the
Pentium II.

What next you may
ask. Well, AMD releases
the K6-III, which was basically the K6-2, but with 256KB of full core
speed L2 cache. But, with
that release, we all know what happened. The K7 rumors started coming out. Now, the K7 is called the Athlon. It’s also called the Intel Killer. At the same clock speed, AMD finally made a CPU that will beat
the Intel flagship CPU. This
has NEVER happened before. So
now, Intel is struggling. It’s
now threatened motherboard makers that make Athlon compatible
motherboards with a shortage in its 440BX and i820 chipsets.

Being that
can’t be proven, there is nothing we can do to punish Intel for what
they are doing besides stop buying their products. We all know it’s wrong to use their position in the industry
to stay on top. That’s
why Microsoft is in the mess they are in now, and that is why I
mentioned them in the previous episode. Intel has obviously done something wrong. Not only are they dying slowly, they must strip themselves of
all their pride by trying to stay alive in coward like ways. Now, what Intel must do is actually produce a new CPU that is
revolutionary. They
haven’t done anything like that for almost three years, when they
introduced the Pentium Pro, which is still the basis of all Intel CPUs
to this day. With the
Merced CPU so far off, and having so many delays, it’s doubtful
they’ll have anything new soon. Meanwhile, AMD is already planning the K8, which will be even
better than the K7.

I would like to
conclude with 2 things:

LONG LIVE AMD!

Stock Tip: For
long-term investments, buy stock in AMD.